Updating a DELL Precision M6800 Laptop - BIOS update hangs on updating IMEI

[Sasqui]

Oh I see. Do you see it if you enable UEFI only? + secure boot?

That's one I haven't tried. UEFI on and "Enable Legacy Option ROMs" set to on and secure boot off. Do you know what secure boot does? ...I don't!

That said... all the other units I've flashed successfully were set to the same.

 

[Solaris17]

Yeah secure boot is not new https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/oem-secure-boot

I'm not super intrested in the other machines, In this case I am just wondering if the options to control IME are only exposed with secureboot enabled. Which would make sense. You can always disable it.

 

[Sasqui]

Yeah secure boot is not new https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/oem-secure-boot

I'm not super intrested in the other machines, In this case I am just wondering if the options to control IME are only exposed with secureboot enabled. Which would make sense. You can always disable it.

It's totally worth a try! With the IME seemingly messed up, it may fail based on that article. Still, I'll try it... the M6800 is in such good shape and has a decent Quadro graphics card

 

[lexluthermiester]

The update process itself is super easy, isn't it quite literally just clicking an executable?

Yes, it's that easy. The Dell diags can be tricky, if that's what you meant, then yes I feel your pain.

Yes, it updated the DELL BIOS and shows it as A26 (the latest version), but after the DELL BIOS, it proceeds to the to the IME flash and there's where it got stuck. It boots into Windows, but it's really slow. I ran the DELL diagnostics and everything is A-Okay. But booting into Windows from an SSD being really slow. However (and not surprisingly), it won't install the IME drivers in Windows.

Service tag is 2BGFXZ1

I've seen this before on this exactly model. The BIOS version you were running before was likely the factory BIOS. Do you remember which version you were on to start with? I can walk you through a potential fix for this, but I need to know where you started from.

 

[Sasqui]

I've seen this before on this exactly model. The BIOS version you were running before was likely the factory BIOS. Do you remember which version you were on to start with? I can walk you through a potential fix for this, but I need to know where you started from.

The BIOS was version A10... interestingly, it's not available in the older versions of the BIOS on the support website...

 

[lexluthermiester]

The BIOS was version A10... interestingly, it's not available in the older versions of the BIOS on the support website...

View attachment 275782

Damn. I was hoping you weren't going to say that. IIRC, A10 had a serious flaw that required a motherboard swap if a user updated it. I'm not 100% on that as it might have been A12. Either way you might actually be stuck the way you are.

However, there is light at the end of the tunnel, if the BIOS is booting and the system gets into Windows, get into the Device Manager and disable anything with the yellow caution sign. It should allow Windows to load while skipping over the attempt to initialize those devices. Can't tell you much more without getting hands-on.

 

[Sasqui]

Damn. I was hoping you weren't going to say that. IIRC, A10 had a serious flaw that required a motherboard swap if a user updated it. I'm not 100% on that as it might have been A12. Either way you might actually be stuck the way you are.

However, there is light at the end of the tunnel, if the BIOS is booting and the system gets into Windows, get into the Device Manager and disable anything with the yellow caution sign. It should allow Windows to load while skipping over the attempt to initialize those devices. Can't tell you much more without getting hands-on.

Odd thing is I've updated about 4 others and I could swear most had A10. I'll check out device manager, good advice!

 

[lexluthermiester]

Odd thing is I've updated about 4 others and I could swear most had A10. I'll check out device manager, good advice!

Chime back in and let us know if that works. I'm doing some digging, but it's been a while and I don't work for Dell anymore so I'm going just on memory. If I find anything useful I'll post it here.

 

[Jhossep]

A cordial greeting to this great community, I am aware that several months have passed since this but it turns out that I have the same problem that is mentioned here, it is impossible for me to enter the "mebx" menu and I get that annoying error message "fw status recovery" every time I turn on my computer.

I've searched everywhere trying to fix this and I still haven't found a concrete solution, by chance has any of you managed to solve this very complicated puzzle? I hope you can help me please, I can give you more specific details about my problem if you are still active here.

 

[Sasqui]

A cordial greeting to this great community, I am aware that several months have passed since this but it turns out that I have the same problem that is mentioned here, it is impossible for me to enter the "mebx" menu and I get that annoying error message "fw status recovery" every time I turn on my computer.

I've searched everywhere trying to fix this and I still haven't found a concrete solution, by chance has any of you managed to solve this very complicated puzzle? I hope you can help me please, I can give you more specific details about my problem if you are still active here.

Sorry, never resolved it. I had several other laptops to work with, so the problem laptop has just been gathering dust.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

Interesting. I am to share a couple thoughts. Try, don't try, already tried.... ok.

Boot windows, uninstall ME via device manager. Shut down, not restart. Enter bios, flash. (Or any other flash method).

Some boards are notoriously picky. So, you would now follow the recovery method provided by the manufacturer. Not just flash w/e, but using a recovery file.

ME never rolls backwards. Would try and flash to the ME that was originally on the board before the first attempt.

And if you finally get a recovery installed, flash incrementally 1 revision at a time without skipping. Gigabyte motherboards have been known for this as example.

All else fails, could always look into a programmer.

/thoughts

 

[Jhossep]

Interesting. I am to share a couple thoughts. Try, don't try, already tried.... ok.

Boot windows, uninstall ME via device manager. Shut down, not restart. Enter bios, flash. (Or any other flash method).

Some boards are notoriously picky. So, you would now follow the recovery method provided by the manufacturer. Not just flash w/e, but using a recovery file.

ME never rolls backwards. Would try and flash to the ME that was originally on the board before the first attempt.

And if you finally get a recovery installed, flash incrementally 1 revision at a time without skipping. Gigabyte motherboards have been known for this as example.

All else fails, could always look into a programmer.

/thoughts

Hey! Thanks for this idea, but now I realize that my PC is not able to enter the BIOS recovery mode by pressing the "CTRL + ESC" keys, it loads the DELL logo and then the message "FW status recovery error" comes again... It seems that I will have to give up this time, maybe the board has no choice but to throw it away, or use it as a spare lol I saw a video from DELL support explaining step by step to recover the BIOS but if I can't enter In recovery mode I don't think I can do anything else.

I already tried to downgrade the bios and then update it again by flashing it via USB, in the bios menu there is the option to flash via USB, and it was the only thing it let me do, but without any solution to the problem already mentioned... it degrades. It installs perfectly, just like when I updated it again to its latest version, everything was perfect but the annoying message and the "meBX" option still doesn't work.

I really don't know what else to do, some say that changing the battery and updating the BIOS will solve it, others say no, all this is a riddle lol If you have any other idea on how to solve this sh1t I would really appreciate it!

 

[AleXXX666]

Oof, Dell BIOS update issues... You couldn't ask for a more convoluted, vague, and obfuscated update procedure. I would say a last ditch effort might be to manually flash the ROM chip with the BIOS using a CH341A flash programmer but I'm pretty sure multiple ROM chips on the board are updated during this procedure, also betting many are completely undocumented with no download available.

I might have to agree with those saying the firmware is corrupt and unable to properly reflash. At the risk of sounding dumb have you tried flashing via the emergency BIOS recovery route? Like holding down a key combo on the motherboard during boot with a FAT32 USB drive containing the flash image and having the computer do a dumb flash? Something like this? Not sure if all their laptops support reflashing like this though, could be pretty hit or miss.

Godspeed, soldier.

never had ANY issue with MANY Dells.

 

[DirtyDingusMcgee]

I had the exact same thing (or at least received the same error message after a flash) on a dell desktop recently. Recovering the bios is what worked for me. Here is a link to the dell instructions for that. Good luck.

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/...recover-the-bios-on-a-dell-computer-or-tablet

 

[Jhossep]

I had the exact same thing (or at least received the same error message after a flash) on a dell desktop recently. Recovering the bios is what worked for me. Here is a link to the dell instructions for that. Good luck.

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/...recover-the-bios-on-a-dell-computer-or-tablet

Greetings! I tried to do it, I even have the USB memory ready with the "BIOS_IMG.rcv" file ready, but now the problem is that I cannot enter the BIOS recovery mode, unless it is another key combination since the ones they say in DELL support "CTRL + ESC" does not work for me... is there another method that can enter the BIOS recovery?

 

[remixedcat]

Sorry, never resolved it. I had several other laptops to work with, so the problem laptop has just been gathering dust.

Have you tried an RTC reset sometimes that hangs some systems bios updates... I had that happen once.

 

[Sasqui]

Have you tried an RTC reset sometimes that hangs some systems bios updates... I had that happen once.

According to this, the Precision M6800 isn't supported? It's a 4th gen CPU. https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/...r-your-dell-portable-system#supported-systems

 

[remixedcat]

According to this, the Precision M6800 isn't supported? It's a 4th gen CPU. https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/...r-your-dell-portable-system#supported-systems

Try that anyways it might work anyways...

I tried that w an older latitude since it hung on an update at the same stage.. hope it works.. if not you might wanna do the standard 30/30 reset

Disconnect all power sources, hold down power button for 30 secs, then reconnect power sources and hold down for 30 secs

 

[DirtyDingusMcgee]

Greetings! I tried to do it, I even have the USB memory ready with the "BIOS_IMG.rcv" file ready, but now the problem is that I cannot enter the BIOS recovery mode, unless it is another key combination since the ones they say in DELL support "CTRL + ESC" does not work for me... is there another method that can enter the BIOS recovery?

Not sure what to tell you. I just tried it on 6 random dells of different age, make and model.....it worked for all of them. Motherboards for it can be had for about 100 dollars or less. Sometimes.....they just need a board

 

[Sasqui]

Try that anyways it might work anyways...

I tried that w an older latitude since it hung on an update at the same stage.. hope it works.. if not you might wanna do the standard 30/30 reset

Disconnect all power sources, hold down power button for 30 secs, then reconnect power sources and hold down for 30 sec

I'll definitely try it. I'm currently working on getting another one up for sale, then back to that one.

 

[remixedcat]

I'll definitely try it. I'm currently working on getting another one up for sale, then back to that one.

send me one!!

 

[Sasqui]

send me one!!

The only viable one I have left is a M4800... other than the problem M6800. DM me if you're interested in either.

 

[remixedcat]

The only viable one I have left is a M4800... other than the problem M6800. DM me if you're interested in either.

dm sent

 

[NSX05]

Is this yet another instance of Dell providing corrupted BIOS updates?